


The Tale of the Fox and the Scorpion

by TheLadyDisdain



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 10:17:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20906009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyDisdain/pseuds/TheLadyDisdain
Summary: It's the Summer of '88. American tourist Johnny Lawrence, after traveling to Italy as part of his European adventure, has found himself entangled with an unlikely, uncanny, and very much undead, Italian boy. But the peace of their Summer will be interrupted by the arrival of a ghost from Daniel's past.





	The Tale of the Fox and the Scorpion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [A_LazyPanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_LazyPanda/gifts).

> This story was written as part of the Cobra Kai October OC exchange, using the characters that Gia467 created for her story What You Are in the Dark. I got a little carried away writing this one, because I had just finished reading A Discovery of Witches and I was loving all things related to vampires. The plot is also inspired by the Star Trek Voyager episode 'Scorpion'.
> 
> Even though I've tried to follow Gia's headcanons, there may be some inconsistencies between her story and mine. Please treat this like an AU.
> 
> Warning: LONG. Like I said, I got carried away... this was going to be a short one-shot and ended up with 7000 words.

**THE TALE OF THE FOX AND THE SCORPION**

The clock on the church tower of Sant’Eligio Maggiore struck two, breaking the silence of the Naples night. Then, some other sounds followed: a key rattling in a lock, and the squeaky hinges of an old door. 

In a run-down apartment, in the building next to the church, a hand searched for the light switch. The lightbulb was covered in dust, and a yellowish light bathed the figure of a young man, who sighed before taking off his shoes and letting himself fall on the battered couch. He had blond hair, blue eyes, and a pensive expression on his face.

It had been a nice evening, although Daniel hadn’t been in good spirits. Johnny was getting used to the boy’s mood swings, especially since he’d learned that his friend wasn’t entirely human. They’d had a late dinner in a small trattoria… well, Johnny had had dinner. Daniel couldn’t really eat, of course; but he liked the way the food smelled, and the reflection of the light on the wine. He could spend hours swirling the red liquid around in the glass, lost in who knew what thoughts until Johnny said something that made him snap out of that secret place in his mind.

At least tonight Johnny knew the reason for Daniel’s melancholy. He reached for a newspaper that someone had left on the floor, and searched within his pages until he found what he was looking for: an article about the recent disappearance of a series of young men, in several points of the city. The journalist had embellished the story with many absurd theories, from the Camorra to a band of international kidnappers, but according to the trattoria owner the newspapers were just trying to craft a story out of nothing. 

Daniel didn’t feel that way. When Johnny tried to exact an explanation out of him, he just went quiet and changed the topic. 

After dinner, Daniel had insisted that Johnny would be staying with him that night… but when they got to the door he said he had something to do, leaving the blond boy alone with his thoughts.

He wasn’t alone for too long, though. Ten minutes later, an insistent knock on the door startled him, and he rushed towards it, barefoot. 

“You should have more than one key, Daniel. One of these days you’re going to lose it, and—”

He stopped, with his mouth agape and his eyes fixed on the girl who stood on the threshold.

“May I come in?” she asked, in a perfect English with just a hint of Italian accent. 

“Yes, of course!” he said, automatically and without thinking. 

With an enigmatic smile she glided past Johnny and into the living room, examining her surroundings with piercing blue eyes. Her expensive clothes and patent stilettos looked strange in the old and dusty apartment. And completely out of place in the neighborhood.

_ She must be a model _ , he thought. _ Or an actress. But what’s she doing here? _

“Are you in trouble, miss? Do you need help?” Johnny said, remembering his good manners.

She smiled, her pouty dark lips accenting the eerie paleness of her skin. 

“I’m looking for a friend… but I see he’s not at home.” Her voice was rich and musical, hypnotic like the notes of a cello. “And who might you be?” 

“Johnny. I’m… I’m Daniel’s friend. I don’t live here”, he stammered, unable to take his eyes off the young woman. She held out a hand, white and delicate, with the palm facing downward as if expecting to be hand-kissed, and a light went off in Johnny’s brain. He reached for her hand and brushed the knuckles with his lips. They were cold.

“_Incantata_”, she whispered.

“Are you… are you like Daniel?” he asked, not sure if vampire etiquette allowed for that kind of question, but almost completely sure of the answer. 

Before responding, the young woman walked towards the window and gazed at the dark street below before facing Johnny again.

“So, you know what we are. I see he has chosen to trust you with his secret… and I can imagine why”, said the girl, looking him up and down. “My name is Calypso.”

Johnny was about to keep asking questions, but he was loudly interrupted by the sound of the apartment door being slammed so hard that it almost flew off its hinges. 

“You.”

There was a flash of fear in the eyes of the young woman. It lasted only a second, and then she forced a perfectly white smile, aimed at the enraged Daniel. The boy stood at the door, responding with a death glare.

“Hello, old friend”, she whispered. “It’s been too long.”

An uncomfortable silence filled the room, and Johnny saw Daniel clench his fists. And his jaw.

“I was just getting to know your American friend, and–”

“Why are you here?” Daniel spat between gritted teeth. “The real reason. No games.”

Johnny saw the girl’s face fall. Her smile vanished as she sat primly on the couch, without taking her eyes off Daniel.

“I am alone”, she said, and her eyes were suddenly rimmed with red. “I have been living abroad for… well, a while. I wanted to come back home, and someone told me you were in Napoli. So, I thought…” 

“You thought you could just appear in my city and go on a hunting spree”, Daniel snarled, finally walking into the apartment.

“We all need to hunt, even if you like to pretend you don’t”, she retorted, and for a moment Johnny thought he saw her pearly canines morph into little pointy fangs. “I was born… and reborn… in this city, centuries before your time. It doesn’t belong to you!”

“You’re calling attention”, Daniel continued in a warning tone. “I just paid a visit to someone I know in the Carabinieri. Those men who have been disappearing… it was you. They were all young, beautiful, foreign. How long will it take, even for the stupidest of detectives, to link them all? Now all the vampires in Naples are in danger because one spoiled princess felt like hunting tourists!”

He was practically screaming in her face; Johnny would have intervened, but his common sense told him that meddling in an argument between two deadly creatures wasn’t too wise. The girl blinked and a tear slid slowly down her cheek, crimson over white.

“I told you, I felt lonely”, she said in a shaky voice. “Blood-eaters need a family, a community… or they will go insane. You know it perfectly well, that is why you surround yourself with humans. The girls who walks the streets, the boy thief… and this one, the American who calls himself your ‘friend’ but I know is something more. You may despise your brothers and sisters, but not even you can be alone forever.”

Daniel took a few steps across the room, putting himself between Johnny and the visitor.

“There’s a vampire lair behind the Termini station. A dozen of us live there. Try your luck with them and leave me alone”, he said in a deadpan voice. 

“Those are _ children_! The oldest one was reborn less than fifty years ago. They paint their eyes black, wear chains and color their hair, like characters from the Commedia dell’Arte. And you want me to join that lair of savages?”

Johnny felt like he was at a tennis match. A very dangerous one. He suddenly remembered a group of punk kids he and Daniel had encountered one night… all of them with pale faces and an unnatural air around them. They had talked to Daniel with a strange mix of respect, friendliness and fear, and Johnny was beginning to understand why. 

He saw Daniel’s haunted expression, and he knew he was about to lose his patience. With a frown, the vampire boy walked to the door and held it open.

“Thank you for the visit”, he said, staring daggers at Calypso, who stood up slowly. 

She grabbed her purse, opened it, and handed Daniel a small golden object.

“I brought this back as a token of good will”, she said in a soft voice. “You lost it, remember?”

“I didn’t lose it, I left it behind”, said Daniel, snatching the trinket from her hand. “Now, leave.”

“Iohanni… please.”

Johnny snapped to attention, wondering why the girl was addressing him… but she wasn’t. Her eyes were fixed on Daniel, who shook his head as if repulsed by something.

“I am Daniel now”, he said, and his voice sounded like a deadly warning. “My old name is dead.”

Calypso tilted her head to the side, like a curious bird.

“Interesting choice of name. And of friends”, she said, nodding goodbye to Johnny before walking out the door with measured steps.

Only then Daniel seemed to relax. He sat on the couch, holding the golden object in his hands. It was a locket, very old by the look of it. The boy opened it, stared at it longingly for a few seconds and closed it again, putting it in his pocket. The only thing Johnny could see was that it contained a picture of a young man with blond hair.

“Who was that?” he asked, going to sit beside Daniel. “What did she want?”

Daniel was silent for a long moment before answering.

“Someone I met once.” Then, he looked at Johnny and smiled. “You felt sorry for her.”

“Well, she was crying”, Johnny answered. “What happened, you were friends and you argued? Or lovers? Whatever it was, she seemed really sorry about…”

“Don’t”, said Daniel, looking somber again. “Do not trust that creature. If you see her on the streets, walk away. Do not listen to any of her lies. I’ve known Lisabetta for two hundred years… and I’ve regretted it for almost all of that time.”

That was an unusually long and passionate answer for Daniel, so Johnny just nodded.

“Lisabetta? She said her name was Calypso.”

Daniel smiled again, shaking his head. “Of course she did. Come, it’s very late for you… let’s go to bed.”

With those words he disappeared towards the bedroom, leaving Johnny alone. The blond boy closed his eyes and sighed. Being entangled with a vampire had been a shock at first; he wanted to ask many questions, and Daniel wasn’t too eager to give him answers most of the time. And now, this mysterious woman appeared out of the blue, this woman who had known Daniel for hundreds of years, who probably knew him better than anybody else.

He couldn’t help feeling a little jealous. And he also had even more questions than before.

With a soft sigh he got up, turned off the light, and followed Daniel to his room.

* * *

  
The next morning, Johnny sat at his usual table in the small café, and thanked the owner as she put a cup of steaming cappuccino in front of him.

There was never a lot of food at Daniel’s place, for obvious reasons. Even after Johnny started spending more time there, the only contents of the pantry were a few packets of crisps, half a bar of chocolate, and an almost empty bottle of wine. Johnny liked going out for breakfast anyway, especially because the old lady who owned the café had practically adopted him; every morning she gave him a free pastry, or a bowl of fruit, or way more toast than one person could possibly eat. Her English was as rudimentary as Johnny’s Italian, but food was a universal language.

He was about to attack his third piece of toast, when someone took the seat in front of him.

“Buon giorno, Johnny.”

The boy looked around and noticed that every other person in the café was staring at them. Not surprising, considering the way Calypso clashed with her surroundings. Even in her simple outfit of a black skirt and a white blouse, it was impossible not to notice her.

Remembering Daniel’s warning, Johnny pressed his lips together and kept eating.

“Good morning. I would offer you some breakfast, but I know you vampires don’t care much for toast and coffee.”

“I tried coffee once. It tasted like burnt charcoal”, she said, wrinkling her nose. “You left our common friend at home?”

Johnny fiddled with his food before answering. Daniel had tossed and turned in bed for hours, muttering things in a language he couldn’t understand (not Italian, nor French, nor anything recognizable). When he finally fell asleep, right before sunrise, Johnny got up and let him slumber in peace.

“Why does Daniel dislike you so much?” he asked; curiosity was stronger than caution, and he just couldn’t sit there and not say a word. “Looks like you two have some history.”

“That is what I would like to know”, she whispered, with her gaze lost in the distance. “After he abandoned me in Tehran, I thought… I thought something bad had happened to him.”

“He abandoned you?” asked Johnny, surprised. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

The girl picked a small piece of buttered toast and fixed her eyes on it, as if it was something unusual and precious.

“Yesterday you heard me say that we… our kind… need a family to survive.”

Johnny nodded.

“Our family in Persia was small: Iohanni… or Daniel, like you call him; another one named Mahdi, and myself. But one day Mahdi and I became more than friends, and that is when Daniel started acting in a strange way. Strega can be very possessive”, she purred. “We give too much, but we also demand too much.”

“Strega?” asked Johnny, frowning at the unfamiliar word. 

Calypso left the piece of toast back on the plate and smiled.

“That is what we were called then in the Mediterranean. In the North of Europe, they called us _ wearh _. Vampire is a very… modern word. The language changes, but we stay the same.”

Johnny cleared his throat and looked into the girl’s eyes.

“My mother always says it’s rude to ask a woman about her age, but…”

Her sudden laugh surprised him. It was deep and childish at the same time, like the sound of a silver bell.

“Your lady mother raised a gentleman. But I am too old to care about those things anymore, so I will satisfy your curiosity: I was born in the year of our Lord 1341.”

Johnny made a conscious effort to close his gaping mouth. But, before he could say anything, the girl’s smile turned into a frown again.

“I taught that ungrateful little boy all he needed to know to survive in Persia”, she said, her voice trembling as if she was about to burst into tears. “I protected him from creatures so ancient and so deadly that no modern strega could measure up to them, beings that would have destroyed Daniel just for the fun of it. And that was how he repaid me… Many years I looked for him, until I finally believed he was dead. Then I moved to the New World… yes, to your country. But that is a story for another day, the sun is coming up.”

She rose from her seat without making a noise. 

“Wait!” Johnny exclaimed, standing up. “Maybe there’s something I can do… I could speak to Daniel and help solve this.”

She looked him up and down before flashing another of her enigmatic smiles.

“You remind me of Mahdi. He was always trying to solve all the riddles, settle all the disputes… perhaps that is why Daniel chose you.”

Without another word she turned on her heels and left, leaving a bunch of curious café patrons behind.

Johnny fished a note from the pocket of his jeans, paid for his breakfast, and headed towards the apartment he shared with his bandmates. The toast hadn’t been burnt; but there was a sour taste in his mouth anyway.

* * *

  
Daniel didn’t see Johnny again until that night. Alone in his apartment, he spent the day trying, with little success, to get some rest. He had fed the night before, that wasn’t the problem. But the unexpected visitor from the past had left a sick feeling in his stomach. 

He twisted the chain of the gold locket between his fingers, opening and closing it hundreds of times until the clicking noise made his head ache. Inside, the portrait of the young man, in what looked like Regency clothes, stared at him with his clear green eyes. He closed the locket one final time and hid it under the mattress, right when Johnny’s steps could be heard on the stairs. The young vampire didn’t need to see Johnny’s crooked smile and disheveled hair to know where he’d been all day.

“You have been drinking”, he said, matter-of-factly, helping the blond boy get to the bed. 

“If you had just met a six hundred year-old vampire you would drink, too”, Johnny answered, sitting up with his back against a pillow. 

Daniel observed him closely, as if he was trying to find out exactly how much red wine Johnny had drank. Then he leaned closer to the boy’s face, as if getting ready for a kiss… but he stopped just an inch away, opening his black eyes very wide.

“You’ve seen her again”, he snarled.

Johnny rolled his eyes and threw his head back.

“Yeah, she… she came by the café this morning. Only a moment. How…?”

“I can smell her on you.”

“We talked for, like, five minutes”, Johnny said, the effects of the alcohol already starting to leave his system. “Did you know that ‘vampire’ is a modern word? I had no idea.”

With an exasperated sigh Daniel stormed out of the bedroom, returning with a glass of cold water.

“Drink”, he said, pushing the glass into Johnny’s hand. “Sober up before you do more stupid things.”

Johnny drank the water slowly, looking a bit offended.

“What am I supposed to do during the day?” he protested. “Stay here and watch you sleep and sulk?”

“You can do whatever you want… just stay away from Lisabetta. Or Calypso, or how the Devil she calls herself now.”

Johnny put the empty glass on the nightstand and reached for Daniel’s hand.

“Look, if it makes you happy the next time she appears I’ll tell her to get lost. But she seemed so… sad. She said you had left her alone in Tehran.”

Daniel stood up and started pacing up and down the room, until he finally stopped by the window.

“I guess she also told you about Mahdi.”

“Mahdi was another vampire, right? Calypso said that he…”

“No”, interrupted Daniel. “She told you her story, now you’ll hear mine. Mahdi was not a vampire… at least not in the beginning. He came from the island of the Irish, and he had arrived in Persia on a fishing boat.”

The boy took a deep breath, as if gathering strength, and continued.

“We were together for more than a year. He was so… carefree, so optimistic. You remind me of him sometimes. But Lisabetta can’t stand anybody being happier than her, and that was when things went wrong.”

“What happened?” asked Johnny. “Did she seduce him?”

Daniel let out a bitter laugh.

“Oh, no. That, I would have understood. No, what she did was worse… she turned him into one of us.”

The boy opened the window, and a cool breeze flew into the stuffy room. Then he turned towards Johnny again, spitting the words as if they hurt.

“There are a number of things that can happen when someone is turned. Most of us don’t change much, we just become more like ourselves. The good natured ones keep being kind, the mean get meaner. But sometimes, something switches in here”, he said, pointing at his head. “Mahdi became cruel, bloodthirsty day and night, hunting humans in plain sight for pleasure, and not just because he had to feed. Did your precious Lisabetta tell you that?”

Johnny shook his head, dumbfounded.

“I didn’t abandon them”, Daniel continued. “I escaped from them, because I couldn’t bear the thought that someone I loved had become more of a monster than myself.”

“But… but that wasn’t Calypso’s fault, right? It was an accident!”

“Her blood is poisoned with her own malice”, Daniel spat. “That night, I begged her not to turn him, my instincts told me something could go wrong. But she’s always wanted what she cannot have… and she wanted him, no matter the consequences.”

Johnny sat on the edge of the bed, trying to make sense of the tale. Dealing with the supernatural on a one to one basis was one thing, but this was starting to feel like too much.

“What happened to Mahdi after you left?”

Daniel lowered his head, his eyes closed.

“He was causing too much mindless death in the city. The elder vampires took care of him.”

“You mean they killed him?” asked Johnny, horrified. “Who are those elder vampires?”

“Don’t ask about things you can’t comprehend!” cried Daniel, suddenly furious. “Don’t ever go seeking for other blood-eaters, do you hear me? Don’t even think about them. I shouldn’t have told you anything!”

He turned around to leave.

“Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do!” Johnny cried back, standing up and grabbing Daniel’s arm. It was a stupid move, but the wine was making him reckless. “This conversation is not finished.”

It was a stupid move, indeed. Johnny realized one second later, when he found himself pinned against the wall. He was half a head taller than Daniel, and almost twice as big, but the Italian boy was holding him in place with only one hand pressed to his chest.

“All human creatures are the same”, the smaller boy said, with his voice full of fury. “You see a beautiful face and a tearful eye and your head is lost. But Lisabetta Orsini is not human… and she was a monster even before she was turned.”

“How can you possibly know that? She’s older than you!”

“There is a dark secret in the history of the Orsini family”, Daniel said, loosening the pressure of his hand a little. “A story about a young lady who fell to her death on the eve of her wedding day. An accident, say the chronicles of the time; but other books say that this lady had a younger sister, a sister who was in love with the elder one’s betrothed. A girl who wanted something she couldn’t have… sounds familiar?”

He finally released Johnny, who stood in place breathing heavily.

“Even if that was true… and you have no way of knowing it… that was six centuries ago; she may have changed. Everybody deserves a second chance, right?”

“How American that sounds”, Daniel whispered. “How _ modern_. There were no second chances back in my time, Johnny… some of us didn’t even get the one.”

He turned to leave once again, but he stopped dead in his tracks by the door. With his eyes closed, he approached Johnny again; his lips were moving, and Johnny realized he was reciting something in Italian. He reached for Daniel’s face, putting a hand on the boy’s cold cheek.

“I can’t understand you.”

Daniel opened his eyes and stared at Johnny as if he was seeing him for the first time.

“A scorpion was walking along the bank of a river”, he said, this time in English.

“What?”

“Sshhh… listen. A scorpion was walking along the bank of a river, wondering how to get to the other side. Suddenly, he saw a fox. He asked the fox to take him on his back across the river. The fox said ‘No. If I do that, you’ll sting me and I’ll drown.’ The scorpion assured him, ‘If I did that, we’d both drown.’ The fox thought about it, and finally agreed. So, the scorpion climbed up on his back, and the fox began to swim… but halfway across the river, the scorpion stung him. As the poison filled his veins, the fox turned to the scorpion and said, ‘Why did you do that? Now you’ll drown too.’ ‘I couldn't help it,’ said the scorpion. ‘It's my nature’.”

There was a long silence before Johnny spoke.

“Sometimes I think you’re the brightest mind in the world, Daniel… and sometimes it looks like you’ve gone nuts. We’re in the middle of an argument, and you tell me a fable? Those are for children!”

Daniel looked at him from behind his long lashes. He suddenly seemed many years older, and tired beyond rest.

“There was a time when children knew more about life than most adults do now.”

Johnny responded with another one of his eyerolls. He grabbed his jacket from the pile of clothes beside the bed.

“I’m going to sleep at my place tonight. I can’t stand it when you get all mysterious and shit.”

Daniel took a step back, leaving the door free. Johnny caressed his cheek again before leaving.

“I’ll see you soon. But no more old wives’ tales, okay?”

The smaller boy nodded, pressing his lips together. He heard Johnny’s steps descending to the street, and then he went to the window and watched him walk down the street until his blond head disappeared when he turned a corner. Only then he closed the window and went back inside, without noticing that someone else was watching Johnny from the shadows.

He didn’t hear the clicking of a pair of heels over the cobblestones, nor the laughter that the wind carried away.

The woman on the street took a last look at Daniel’s closed window, smiled, and raised a perfectly manicured hand to stop a taxi. She gave an address, and caught the young driver’s gaze on the rear mirror.

“What are you doing here at this hour, signorina? This part of the city can be dangerous!”

“Oh, I know it is dangerous”, she said, and the driver could have sworn that her teeth had become pointy while she talked. “But I haven’t eaten today… not yet. And I’m starving.”

* * *

_  
I’m sorry. I’m an idiot sometimes. Meet me at the Santa Illuminata convent at midnight, I have a surprise for you. - J. _

Daniel crumpled the piece of paper in his hand and sighed. After three days of complete silence from Johnny, the handwritten note (the first bleak sign of reconciliation) had been slid under the door of the apartment while Daniel slept.

The choice of meeting place was unusual, especially for Johnny who was a relative newcomer in Naples. Santa Illuminata had been a medieval convent, abandoned by the nuns after the 1626 earthquake. Only a few photographers and intrepid tourists dared to go inside every now and then, documenting the crumbling stones and derelict halls.

At a quarter to midnight, according to the clock in Sant’Eligio, Daniel left home and walked with quick steps towards the part of the city where the old convent was. It was the perfect place for a romantic walk, in a way: the stone ruins stood between a park and the medieval city walls, on top of a small hill. There wasn’t a soul in sight, and the full moon made the boy cast a long shadow against the almost dilapidated wall that surrounded the old building. 

It was cold inside, of course. The doors were long gone, as were most of the windows. Here and there, some shattered remains of stained glass that had survived the centuries drew a fantastic multicolor mosaic on the marble floor when the light went through them. Daniel walked into the main hall in silence, almost becoming one with the shadows. A small rat scurried next to his feet, probably outraged at the intrusion. In front of him, a long corridor and a cloister surrounded by columns separated the hall and the church from what would have been the convent’s private area, and Daniel headed there after finding that the stone stairs to the upper floors were little more than a pile of rubble. 

His breathing became agitated when he saw a faint golden glow at the end of the corridor. He put all his heightened senses to work, moving in complete silence from behind one column to the next. Unfortunately, all the pains he took were useless, because someone _ was _expecting him.

As it turns out, the perfect place for a romantic walk can also be ideal for an ambush. 

* * *

  
Johnny opened his eyes and saw candles. Dozens of them, flames dancing and making the air incandescent with their light. His head ached, nothing unusual after the amount of alcohol he’d had that afternoon. He remembered perfectly well the empty feeling after his fight with Daniel, and the weekend-long drinking binge that followed. But there had been something else, right? He remembered arriving to the bar, being there for hours, and then talking to… 

_ Oh. _

Then he saw the girl, standing before him with her bewitching smile, and clarity descended upon him like a ton of bricks.

“I am glad to see you awake, Johnny… just in time to welcome our guest.”

The guest in question looked around him, taking in the details of the spacious room. Contrasting with the desolation of the bare stone in the other areas of the building, this one had been transformed into a replica of what a medieval hall would look like. There were plush carpets covering the stone floor, tapestries on every wall, luxurious ottomans and brocade pillows everywhere.

And, presiding the scene, a priceless antique: a painting of the same young woman who now stood across the room from Daniel. Her hair was styled differently, of course, the crimson gown had nothing to do with her modern clothes… and her cheeks in the painting looked rosy, _ alive _. But it was undoubtedly her.

The boy looked at Johnny, who was sitting on a beautifully carved chair. In the golden light of the candles, he saw the ropes around his wrists and ankles that tied him in place. The poor boy looked exhausted, hungover, and scared out of his wits.

“What’s that thing mortals always say…? Ah, yes, I love what you’ve done with the place”, Daniel snickered, staring at Calypso without blinking.

“This was the convent where I was educated”, she answered, strolling around the hall with slow steps. “Up there, in the gallery, were the rooms where I lived with the other daughters of the noblest families in town. The nuns lived down here… and this was their refectory. I’m going to transform it into a dance hall.”

“A dance hall”, Daniel muttered in an emotionless voice. “This is also the place where your parents locked you up after you killed your sister, right? Strange place for a ball.”

The girl turned towards him, with her mouth twisted in a snarl.

“She didn’t deserve all she had! She was a mousy little creature, destined to marry a great lord only because she was born first. I didn’t even have to push her hard.”

“And here is where your days would have ended, caged and forgotten, if it hadn’t been for one clueless vampire who only saw your innocent exterior and not the beast inside you.”

“Not a beast, Daniel… a queen. And this place when I am finished with it, will be my castle.”

Daniel started walking towards her, but she retreated, standing between him and Johnny.

“Stay where you are, boy”, she warned. “Or your friend will be deprived of a glorious destiny and become just another corpse.”

The black-haired boy took a step back.

“Let him go. The world is full of stupid men who would love an offer of immortality… but Johnny doesn’t want it.”

“Ah, but none of those men would be like this one”, she purred, caressing Johnny’s cheek with a pale hand. “After centuries of disappointment… finally, I have found my perfect prince.”

Then she grabbed Johnny by the hair, forcing him to look at her, and brushed her lips against his.

“I can see why you like him”, Calypso whispered. “He tastes like the sun and the sea, like ripe peaches… like all that is warm and luminous. Once I’ve turned him, he will be perfect.”

Daniel let out a barking laugh.

“You ramble about beauty and perfection, like you did centuries ago in Tehran”, he snarled. “But all I see is a spoiled little girl who always wants what she can’t have. Like with your sister’s betrothed… like with Mahdi.”

He made another attempt to get closer, but she was quicker. She wrapped a hand around Johnny’s neck, with her pointy red nails pressing against his skin.

“I said don’t come closer!” she cried in a shrill voice. “Or you will witness his death before I rip your head from your shoulders.”

Daniel froze in place, the silence only broken by Johnny’s ragged breath.

“Daniel…” he whispered. “Sorry…”

“Shhh, don’t say that”, the smaller boy answered, apparently calm. “It’s not your fault. She charmed you, and you had no choice but to fall under her spell. Calypso, let him go. If all you wanted was to lure me into a trap, here I am. But he has no business being here.”

The vampire relaxed the pressure on Johnny’s neck. With her glassy eyes fixed on Daniel, she opened the lid of an old chest and took something out.

“Do you remember this, Daniel?” she asked, with the singsong tone of a schoolteacher. There was a glint of metal and a sharp sound, and Daniel’s eyes opened in recognition.

“Mahdi’s sword”, he said between gritted teeth. “I had it made for him.”

“Exactly”, Calypso cooed, with a preternatural smile on her face. “And now you’re going to die by it… isn’t it poetic?”

“You’re insane, Lisabetta. Stop with the games.”

The steel blade glowered red in the candlelight.

“The game is not finished until your head rolls at my feet, you insolent rat”, she growled. “It’s your choice, Daniel: do you want to perish first so your precious Johnny can live forever, or do you want to witness his death before I end your miserable life?”

Silence again, only broken by Johnny’s feeble whisper.

“Daniel.. save yourself… please.”

Those were the only words his parched throat could manage. Johnny felt like he was going to faint as a result of the alcohol, the exhaustion and the fear. The smoke of the candles and was getting in his eyes, and everything in the room looked blurry… everything except for Daniel. Daniel who, in the middle of a desperate situation, looked at him and smiled, as if they had all the time in the world.

Daniel who, with his hands in his pockets, took one last look at the painting of Lisabetta Orsini hanging above the fireplace, and, in his boyish voice, uttered one word:

“Scorpion.”

Several things happened then, at the same time. An object was thrown from the upper gallery, hitting the floor right at Calypso’s feet. Startled, she looked up, but she couldn’t see her attacker in the dark. Another projectile fell, even closer, splashing her clothes with a rancid smelling liquid. There was a sound of broken glass as a third oil lamp joined the former two, this time hitting the vampire’s midsection.

While she was distracted, Johnny began struggling with his bonds until a female hand, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, grabbed his arm. The newcomer drew a knife and cut the young man’s ties in a second. Johnny recognized her then: Meena, Daniel’s elusive friend. She grabbed Johnny’s hand and practically dragged him behind a column, just in time to see Calypso lose her temper.

“Your silly distractions can’t stop me, Daniel!” she cried, advancing towards the boy with her sword in her hand. “Now I will have your little friends, too.”

Daniel didn’t move. He stood in place, still cool as a cucumber, and gave a nod to his invisible ally in the gallery.

Johnny’s eyes were finally getting used to the dark. In the shadows of the gallery he saw the figure of a man… no, not a man, too small for that. A child. A small boy with an oil lamp in his hand, like the ones he had thrown before… but this one was lit.

The object described a perfect downwards curve across the air. Rafael had great aim for such a small boy (practiced for years with small stones), and this time he hit the target right in the middle.

It wouldn’t have mattered much even if he hadn’t… because the combination of old carpets and lamp oil doesn’t need a lot of encouragement to start burning, and it was set ablaze in a second. 

The sudden burst of flames made Johnny close his eyes for a moment. But he opened them again when a piercing scream almost deafened him. There, in the middle of a circle of flames and black smoke, stood Calypso. She tried to retreat towards the wall, but the tapestry that covered it started burning too. The fire clung to the lamp oil that covered her, and followed her every movement in a deadly dance.

Daniel moved towards the burning vampire and picked up the sword she had just dropped.

“You were the one who said that vampires need a family… remember, Lisabetta?” he said with a dark expression in his face. “That’s what you forgot to take into account. My family. Meena and Rafael.”

“You miserable rat!” Calypso screamed, trying in vain to put out the flames. “I will end you!”

A smell of burning flesh spread through the air, and Johnny had to avert his eyes. He clung to Meena’s arm, willing the contents of his stomach to stay in place.

“I will end you”, the older vampire repeated, taking a step towards Daniel with her fangs gleaming in the red light.

“No. This ends here.”

Daniel grasped the sword with both hands, swung it, and the screaming came to a halt. 

He didn’t move for a long moment, observing how the fire consumed the remains of his old enemy. The flames had started spreading to the rest of the hall, catching quickly on the brocade fabrics and the old furniture. It was a sight to behold: the pale, black-haired boy, with a sword in his hand, and surrounded by the dancing flames. The last thing to start burning was the portrait of the girl, as if the fire was afraid to touch it.

A tear of blood fell down Daniel’s face. Johnny detached himself from Meena and ran towards him.

“Everybody out”, Daniel snapped, suddenly aware of the presence of his mortal friends. “This room is like a tinderbox. Rafael, go out the window and meet us outside!”

They started walking and ended up running, abandoning the ruined building to the fire that advanced slowly across the old rooms and corridors. At last, the four of them met outside, across the street from the fiery ruin.

“Meena, take Rafael home”, Daniel said. “The _ pompieri _ will be here soon.”

The woman nodded, took the little boy’s dirty hand and disappeared just as the sound of a distant siren could be heard in the distance. Daniel turned to Johnny, examining the scratches on his neck with clinical care.

“Are you all right?”

“All right?” Johnny exclaimed, still breathing heavily. “We almost died in there! If you hadn’t appeared…”

“It’s fine now”, said the other boy, putting his free arm around Johnny’s waist. “We can go home.”

“Yeah, that sounds good”, Johnny said, relieved. But then, he stopped dead in his tracks. “Hey, wait a minute… you had a plan, right? You told Meena and the kid to come to the convent, they were following your orders. You knew Calypso was going to do this!”

“Not quite _ this _. But I suspected she would do something. Remember my friend in the Carabinieri? Three days ago he informed me that she had bought the old convent, and that she had furniture and other things brought inside. I knew that whatever she was planning it would take place here, where her old life died and her new existence began.”

“This is not the moment to be fucking poetic, Daniel. She could have killed us both!”

“No. I knew you wouldn’t be in any danger until I arrived here. Lisabetta has always had a need to be admired… to boast about the things she achieved. You would have been her final triumph over me, and there’s no triumph without an audience. Like I tried to tell you with the scorpion fable… it was in her nature.” 

Johnny shook his head, trying to understand everything that had happened. Then he pointed to the blood-stained sword that Daniel was still holding.

“Are you keeping that thing?”

The boy shrugged, took off his jean jacket and wrapped the sword in it.

“Better not walk the streets with this in sight. I don’t want to have to use it ever again.”

“You cut off her—”

“Head”, he interrupted. “Yes. Safest way to kill a blood-eater.”

Then he put his hand on Johnny’s shoulder and stared into the boy’s blue eyes.

“Are you sure you still want to go home with me after what you saw here tonight?”

“Well, you just saved my life, right?”

Johnny grabbed Daniel’s hand and started walking away from the flaming convent. A firefighters’ truck, two police cars and an ambulance passed right by them at all speed.

“I may have saved your life today, but you were in danger because of me”, said the young vampire in a sad tone. “You have now seen the death we leave behind… This is what my kind brings wherever we go. Death, fire and destruction.”

“You also leave behind other things. And I was going to see that side one day, so I better get it out of the way now.”

Daniel laughed.

“You are an extraordinary creature, Johnny Lawrence. Here, you should have this.”

He handed Johnny the sword, still bundled in his old jacket.

“What the hell am I going to do with a sword?”

“Send it to your mother. A gift from the Old World to display at her house.”

“Oh, Sid is going to hate it so much… It’s perfect. I’ll tell Mom to hang it over the mantelpiece. But… are you sure you don’t want to keep it?”

“It’s my apology for using you as bait with Lisabetta”, Daniel whispered, interlacing his fingers with Johnny’s.

They walked in complete silence the rest of the way to Daniel’s place. When they crossed the door of his apartment, Daniel stood on his tiptoes and kissed Johnny softly on the lips.

“What did I do to deserve that now?” the blond boy asked. “Apart from being supremely stupid, falling into a trap, and having to be rescued like a damsel in distress in a bad movie.”

Daniel smiled, brushed his bangs off his forehead, and put his arms around Johnny in a tight embrace.

“That is for being extraordinary.”


End file.
